This has been sitting in the cupboard for 2 months now. I've had some wisdom teeth problems recently which cause pain whenever I eat something sweet, but I have to have *this*. What is it? It's the Christmas and Fathers' Day pressie that all men love to start with but get bored with after the twice a year bars for 10 years. It's the male equivalent of the Chocolate Orange. It's the one and only TOBLERONE.

oOoOo DID YOU KNOW? oOoOo

Toblerone was first created in 1908 and the word 'toblerone' is a word play on the names 'Tobler' and 'Torrone', the Italian word for honey-almond nougat. It was Theodor Tobler who developed both the triangular design and (more importantly) the recipe for Toblerone so it was only fair he should feature in it's name!

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After struggling with a flimsy wrapper that tore into little pieces rather than letting me get to the good stuff, I'm in! A toblerone is a whole new way of looking at chocolate. You've got a base of chocolate that's holding together 8 tringles of the same chocolate. It's such an eye catching design that you can't help but like it - it's unusual. And Toblerone know this as they patented the shape of their chocolate in 1994.

The important bit.....

~~~The Taste Test~~~

Pretty as this bar may be, actually getting to taste it is a messy business. You've got 2 choices. Either try to bite a segment off and have the discomfort of stabbing the roof of your mouth with the pointy end of the triangle or break it off with your hands - but toblerone melts very quickly.

Once you've got a segment though it's worth it. What I just said about toblerone melting quickly, it doesn't when it's in your mouth. The chocolate is more of a coating for the nougat and rather than melt, it clings to the nougat until you start chewing. The nougat is wonderfully chewy and there's tiny pieces of almond mixed in with the nougat to give a crunchy texture to the bar. Even though you can't taste the honey, you can feel it in the chocolate. It binds the chocolate to the nougat and although this means the chocolate isn't as creamy as other Swiss chocolate varieties such as Lindt, there's a slightly bitter taste to it.

The bar as a whole is really sweet. I've got quite a sweet tooth sometimes and it's a bit too cloyingly sweet for me to eat regularly. You can taste the quality of the chocolate as soon as you bite it, it's rich and full of flavour as only the Swiss and Belgians can do it.

I paid 46p for this diddy little 35g baby of the Toblerone family. This milk chocolate version is the only bar of the trio of Toblerones (milk, dark and white) to have successfully made the transition from huge 200g boxed version to snack sized bar. And this is because it's the best one. Simple. In the past I've tried the dark and white variety of Toblerone but it's the milk chocolate one I always go back to.

From memory, the dark chocolate toblerone tastes like poor quality dark chocolate. It was too bitter to get the proper effect of the nougat. I'm not too keen on white chocolate anyway, and biting into a white chocolate toblerone is like eating a 2 inch thick Milky Bar. WOW! One of the sweetest things I have EVER tasted - and I craved icing sugar mixed with cocoa powder and cold water when I was pregnant!

So go for the milk. Now, I've just had a glance on the Toblerone website (www.toblerone.com if anyone cares) and apparently 100g of toblerone contains 525 calories and 29.5g fat which means this baby bar cost me 183 cals and 10.5g fat. But it was worth it for the pure, unadulterated pleasure of this chocolate bar.

Thanks for reading.

ps - Talking of triangle chocolate, does anyone remember a bar that was out about 12 years ago called Moments? It was a line of chocolate mountains with white choc peaks and praline in the middle? I think I'm the only person in the world who remembers this bar of yumminess. Sorry, the toblerone reminded me of it!